BearHub

Simplifying the application and onboarding experience for prospective volunteers.

Bearhub serves as an information forum for students, offering a centralized platform for clubs, organizations, and students to access club/events details.

Designed for college students, with an initial focus on UC Berkeley students.

Bearhub aims to help students easily find clubs and campus resources tailored to their needs. Since every student is looking for something different, the goal is to simplify access to relevant opportunities in one centralized platform.

Key stakeholders are UC Berkeley students, student organizations, university departments, and the Bearhub team.

The challenge is to design BearHub, a platform that addresses the needs of Berkeley students by facilitating the discovery of clubs and resources tailored to their individual preferences.

We distributed a survey to UC Berkeley students over 2 weeks through word of mouth, social media, group chats, and campus clubs. The survey included multiple choice and free response questions to understand how students currently find campus resources, what platforms they use, what features they value or wish existed, and what club-related information (e.g. applications and deadlines) they care about.

Sample questions from user research survey

We also surveyed on-campus clubs and organizations to understand how they promote themselves, share information, and engage with members. We also gauged interest in engaging in outreach through Bearhub and participating in usability testing to ensure the platform meets their needs.

We conducted 5 user interviews with UC Berkeley students to gain deeper insights beyond the survey. Questions allowed for more detailed responses about how students find and engage with campus resources.

We created an affinity diagram to organize and summarize key insights from user surveys and interviews, helping us identify common themes around student needs, challenges, and feature preferences.

Based on survey and interview insights, we created user personas to represent student types and their goals, which helps guide design decisions around personalized experiences and feature prioritization.

We reviewed similar websites and mobile apps that connect students to opportunities that focuses on features, usability, and how they promote engagement.

make club and event resources more accessible and convenient for students?

After identifying key problems, we brainstormed solutions by dividing the app into 5 main pages: Events, Clubs, Profile, Chat, and Onboarding. We began with paper prototypes for Events and Clubs, reviewed team ideas, and merged the best features into one solution. For Profile, features like friends, following, interests, and upcoming events support community-building. We used standardized frames for Chat. For Onboarding, we based our low-fi design on client requirements. Then, we mapped an user journey flow showing how each tab supports easier access to student communities and opportunities.

User journey visualization

We had a whiteboard session to brainstorm low-fi prototypes, incorporating research insights and student feedback. For the Events page, we sketched features like tags, calendar, map, RSVP links, suggested events, and a save/discover option. For the Clubs page, we included categories (e.g., professional, tech) and a swipe feature to indicate interest, aiming for a more engaging and organized user experience.

We transformed our whiteboard sketches into mid-fidelity prototypes to visualize the structure and layout of the Events and Clubs pages. These prototypes included key components like event tags, calendars, maps, and club cards to reflect features.

We tested various color schemes, aiming to incorporate red to make key content stand out. After experimenting with different combinations through mockups on the Events page, we finalized a design using hints of red for a bold and balanced look.

Mockup to experiment with color schemes

Finalized design system

The old navigation bar was text-heavy, so we simplified it by replacing text with icons for each tab. This made the interface cleaner and more user-friendly.

We incorporated the finalized color scheme and added key components based on student feedback to create mid-fidelity prototypes that reflect app features and visual style.

The Onboarding tab is formatted as a quiz that captures students' interests to recommend relevant club categories and events. This personalization improves their overall app experience by tailoring content to their preferences.

Refine and unify all designs by standardizing components within the design system.

Develop a calendar view for events and clubs to improve users' schedule visualization.

Create prototypes for all pages to deliver a seamless, integrated app experience.